Some tips while doing a literature reviwe:

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an

overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and
gaps in the existing research.

Writing a literature review involves finding relevant publications (such as books and
journal articles), critically analyzing them, and explaining what you found. There are five
key steps:

1. Search for relevant literature

2. Evaluate sources
3. Identify themes, debates and gaps
4. Outline the structure
5. Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarize sources – it analyzes, synthesizes, and

critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

1. Search for relevant literature:

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic.

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you
will search for literature related to your research problem and questions.

If you are writing a literature review as a stand-alone assignment, you will have to
choose a focus and develop a central question to direct your search. Unlike a
dissertation research question, this question has to be answerable without collecting
original data. You should be able to answer it based only on a review of existing
publications.

Research question exampleWhat is the impact of social media on body image among
Generation Z?
Make a list of keywords
Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research question. Include each of
the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related
terms. You can add to this list if you discover new keywords in the process of your
literature search.

Keywords example

 Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok

 Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
 Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some useful databases to search
for journals and articles include:

 Your university’s library catalogue

 Google Scholar
 JSTOR
 EBSCO
 Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
 Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
 EconLit (economics)
 Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can use boolean operators to help narrow down your search:

 AND to find sources that contain more than one keyword (e.g. social media AND
body image AND generation Z)
 OR to find sources that contain one of a range of synonyms (e.g. generation Z
OR teenagers OR adolescents)
 NOT to exclude results containing certain terms (e.g. apple NOT fruit)

Read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you
find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant
sources.
To identify the most important publications on your topic, take note of recurring
citations. If the same authors, books or articles keep appearing in your reading, make
sure to seek them out.

2. Evaluate and select sources:

You probably won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on the
topic – you’ll have to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your questions.

For each publication, ask yourself:

 What question or problem is the author addressing?

 What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
 What are the key theories, models and methods? Does the research use
established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
 What are the results and conclusions of the study?
 How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm,
add to, or challenge established knowledge?
 How does the publication contribute to your understanding of the topic? What are
its key insights and arguments?
 What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible, and make sure you read any landmark
studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can find out how many times an article has been cited on Google Scholar – a high
citation count means the article has been influential in the field, and should certainly be
included in your literature review.

The scope of your review will depend on your topic and discipline: in the sciences you
usually only review recent literature, but in the humanities you might take a long
historical perspective (for example, to trace how a concept has changed in meaning
over time).

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later
incorporate into the text of your literature review.
It is important to keep track of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism. It can be
helpful to make an annotated bibliography, where you compile full citation information
and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you
remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

You can use our free citation generator to quickly create correct and consistent APA
citations or MLA format citations.

3. Identify themes, debates, and gaps:

To begin organizing your literature review’s argument and structure, you need to
understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based
on your reading and notes, you can look for:

 Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches

become more or less popular over time?
 Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
 Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
 Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed
the direction of the field?
 Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be
addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable)
show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

Example of trends and gapsIn reviewing the literature on social media and body image,
you note that:

 Most research has focused on young women.

 There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
 But there is still a lack of robust research on highly visual platforms like
Instagram and Snapchat – this is a gap that you could address in your own
research.

4. Outline your literature review’s structure:

There are various approaches to organizing the body of a literature review. You should
have a rough idea of your strategy before you start writing. Depending on the length of
your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your
overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological
The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if
you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in
order.

Try to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction
of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

Thematic
If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organize your literature
review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health
outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural
attitudes, legal status, and economic access.

Methodological
If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety
of research methods, you might want to compare the results and conclusions that
emerge from different approaches. For example:

 Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research

 Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical
scholarship
 Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical
A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework. You can use it to
discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine
various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.
5. Write your literature review:
Like any other academic text, your literature review should have an introduction, a main
body, and a conclusion. What you include in each depends on the objective of your
literature review.

Introduction
The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

Dissertation literature reviewIf you are writing the literature review as part of your
dissertation or thesis, reiterate your central problem or research question and give a
brief summary of the scholarly context. You can emphasize the timeliness of the topic
(“many recent studies have focused on the problem of x”) or highlight a gap in the
literature (“while there has been much research on x, few researchers have taken y into
consideration”).Stand-alone literature reviewIf you are writing a stand-alone paper, give
some background on the topic and its importance, discuss the scope of the literature
you will review (for example, the time period of your sources), and state your objective.
What new insight will you draw from the literature?

Body
Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body
into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or
methodological approach.

As you write, you can follow these tips:

 Summarize and synthesize: give an overview of the main points of each source

and combine them into a coherent whole
 Analyze and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers—add your own
interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation
to the literature as a whole
 Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
 Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transition words and topic
sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts
Conclusion
In the conclusion, you should summarize the key findings you have taken from the
literature and emphasize their significance.

Why we do literature review?

When you write a thesis, dissertation, or research paper, you will have to conduct a
literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature
review gives you a chance to:

 Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and scholarly context

 Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
 Position yourself in relation to other researchers and theorists
 Show how your research addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
 Ensure you have a thorough understanding of the topic
 Identify potential areas for research
 Identify similar work done within the area
 Identifying knowledge gaps that demand further investigation
 Compare previous findingscritique existing findings and suggest further
studies
 Provide foundation of knowledge on topic
 Identify areas of prior scholarship to prevent duplication and give credit to
other researchers
 Identify inconstancies: gaps in research, conflicts in previous studies, open
questions left from other research
 Identify need for additional research (justifying your research)
 Identify the relationship of works in context of its contribution to the topic and
to other works
 Place your own research within the context of existing literature making a
case for why further study is needed.
You might also have to write a literature review as a stand-alone assignment. In this
case, the purpose is to evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your
knowledge of scholarly debates around a topic.